I am starting a cold, and feeling feeble. I had agreed to meet the Gentleman Friend in Covent Garden, for lunch at the Barbary, which is one of my favourite restaurants, but was unable to eat much. But it was nice to walk through London, and I sloely felt myself feeling glad and at home to be back in the city that was my home for six years, and that I identified it until the day I couldn’t bear to be there any more. With that, my unhappiness at returning to London began to fade. Malaysia feels very far away.
We walked through Covent Garden and Soho to the bank where we were to open up a new set of accounts more suitable for our travels to come. This took ages, over two hours, a considerable contrast to the same bank’s Malaysian branch where they certainly didn’t go in for the same attention to detail.
We got back only just in time for dinner and though there was a delicious monkfish for us, I could barely eat any of it, and finally had to apologise and put it away for the next day’s breakfast. Travelling felt very difficult indeed, but there it it, all paid for in advance.